Copper Foam Offers Significant Design and Functional Advantages

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Copper foam, now available from Goodfellow, combines the
outstanding thermal conductivity of copper with the structural benefits of a
metal foam. These features are of particular interest to design engineers
working in the fields of medical products and devices, defense systems and
manned flight, power generation, and the manufacture of semiconductor devices.

It is a true skeletal structure – not a sintered, coated, or
plated product – and its purity is typically that of the parent alloy metal,
with no voids, inclusions or entrapments. The matrix of cells and ligaments is
completely repeatable, regular and uniform throughout the material, yielding a
rigid, highly porous and permeable structure with a controlled density of metal
per unit volume.

Characteristics of copper foam include:

Optimal heat transfer

High strength-to-weight ratio

High surface area-to-volume ratio

Isotropic load response

Controlled stress-strain characteristics

Can be brazed

Can be coated and plated

Copper foam is available from Goodfellow in standard pore
sizes of 5, 10, 20 and 40 pores per inch, with a density range of 3 to 12%.
However, the foam can be compressed to achieve higher densities (up to about
70%) and smaller pore sizes (as high as approximately 500 pores per inch).